SouthCoast business owners unite against Brayton Point coal plant

FALL RIVER — Environmental activists and SouthCoast small business owners called Wednesday on Gov. Deval Patrick to close the Brayton Point coal plant by 2020.

ARIEL WITTENBERG

FALL RIVER — Environmental activists and SouthCoast small business owners called Wednesday on Gov. Deval Patrick to close the Brayton Point coal plant by 2020.

The group of more than 20 people gathered in Fall River's Kennedy Park, within full view of the plant's three smoke stacks, and carried homemade signs advocating for the closure of the Somerset plant.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in 2010 a total of 147 pounds of mercury and mercury compounds were released in Massachusetts, 64 by Brayton Point. Also according to the EPA, in 2008 the power plant emitted more than 37,000 tons of toxic chemicals into the air.

"This pollution doesn't only affect Somerset; the majority spreads and settles in cities and towns across a 30-mile radius from the power plant," Sylvia Broude, executive director of the Toxics Action Center, said. "We are calling on Gov. Patrick to use his power to transition Massachusetts away from coal."

The Patrick administration directed requests for comment to the Massachusetts Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Office spokesman Reggie Zimmerman said in a statement that the administration "has been committed to an aggressive clean-energy agenda."

Representatives from Brayton Point did not respond to requests for comment. The power station's website notes that Dominion, which owns the plant, has spent approximately $1.1 billion on environmental improvements to the plant since it was acquired in 2005.

Such improvements include an ash recovery system to offset emissions and reduce landfill needs. In 2009, Dominion built two cooling towers next to the plant to cool waters released by the plant into Mt. Hope Bay that had been causing fish kills.

James McIntyre, a Somerset resident who is a member of the Coalition for Clean Air, said the environmental improvements were not good enough.

"What they ought to do is get rid of the coal entirely," he said. "Now we have all those other things like wind and solar to fire up people's boilers. We don't need to be using coal and giving people asthma and health problems all up and down SouthCoast."